Awfully Good: Bio-Dome

Bio-Dome (1996)

A horror movie where people are locked in a confined space with Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin.

I think BIO-DOME is Pauly Shores best movie. I know thats not saying much but it's true nonetheless. Even though he's at his Pauly Shoriest, there's something about his chemistry with Stephen Baldwin here that elevates this film to unexpected places. Whether that's ultimately good or bad for society, I don't know. It represents either the pinnacle or the nadir of American cinema.

This is a picture of Kylie Minogue staring at Pauly Shore's butthole. You're welcome, Internet.

To call BIO-DOME a stoner movie is too modest. It's definitely in the upper echelon of all-time stupid movies. Picture a film in the vein of DUMB AND DUMBER, but somehow even less subtle in its stupidity. Now imagine that movie on narcotics. (Or maybe I just felt like I was on drugs after the sensory-assaulting opening credits.) There's so much immature nonsense and uninhibited idiocy on display that it perfectly captures what I found funny at 12 years old. For example, whywith everything else going on in the movieare we subjected to a random news report about a clown being shot and killed by a sniper? Because it's funny and I like it, dammit. (Your mileage may vary.)

And the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay goes to

This is one movie where the title actually sums up the plot pretty well. Bud and Doyle are two legendary idiots who wander in to the Bio-Dome, a closed experimental ecosystem, right before it gets completely locked to the outside world for one year. To prove to their eco-friendly girlfriends that they care about the environment, the pair decides to hunker down and make the most of it. And by that I mean they completely destroy science. You see, in addition to being stupid, Bud and Doyle are manic freaks of nature that are always wreaking havoc and chaos. Within a few weeks, the duo manages to eat most of the food, kill almost all the animals, bathe and fart in the water supply, golf with goats, find and ingest nitrous oxide and somehow throw a party inside.

This man was in THE USUAL SUSPECTS one year prior. Suck it, Brando.

The one saving grace of BIO-DOME is the pairing of Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin. They work well together; sue me. They also achieve an almost brilliant level of discourse and linguistics, as if Shore and Baldwin spent years coming up with their own verbal and physical language for the film. The first time you watch it, there are so many random lines and phrases that make zero sense. But with multiple viewings of BIO-DOME (if you have the gall) you'll begin to decipher what's being said and the sentiment being shared. It's like an anthropological study in dumbass. And in between sucking each others toes, smelling each others farts and nearly French kissing on more than one occasion, you might also notice the blatant homo-eroticism Bud and Doyle share:

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I know what you're thinking: why wouldn't the scientists just kick them out? And there's no good answer, especially since the filmmakers actually write in a backdoor exit halfway through the movie. It's not like Bud and Doyle crashed the experiment. They literally were there before it even started. Aside from saving the film's plot, are you telling me it wouldn't be more convenient to just postpone everything for a day or two, as opposed to spending a year in confinement with the Weasel and the Slow Baldwin? It's almost as bad as the plot twist that sees the main scientist going crazy and attempting to blow up the Bio-Dome. (If you listen closely you can almost hear the writers getting to the end of the script and saying, "Crap, we don't have any conflict!") Or the shoehorned environmental message that laughably suggests Doofus and Doofuser could actually rally and save the day when literal rocket scientists couldn't.